Unlikely path for south suburban charter school Uncharted waters for south suburban school

June 02, 2010|By Patrick Ferrell, Special to the Tribune

Even with unlimited time, it's a formidable to-do list: hire teachers and administrators, write and approve policies, accept registrations from students and, finally, hold a lottery for the 125 spots up for grabs in the first year of Southland Charter Prep High School.

Consider that all must be completed before August and the task seems beyond daunting. Still, Matteson School District 162 Superintendent Blondean Davis is excited.

Few expected her campaign for the first charter school in the south suburbs to come this far. When the Illinois State Board of Education last month approved Davis' application to open a charter high school, it was just the third time the state board had overturned a local district's denial of a charter school plan.

"I'm glad I didn't know those numbers when I went into this," Davis said. "I probably would have been a lot less confident about our chances."

The approval from the state came three months after the Rich Township High School District 227 board denied the plan, citing the financial impact the charter school would have on the district. Students at District 162's elementary and middle schools previously would go to high schools in District 227.

The charter school will open in August initially to just freshmen and operate out of a wing in Matteson's Huth Middle School. In subsequent years, it will open to other grade levels and likely will move to another building in the high school district's boundaries.

Registration forms for the school likely will be available by midsummer after the charter school board and the state formally approve a contract, Davis said. Because the number of enrollees is expected to exceed the number of spots, a lottery probably will be held, Davis said.

Since she unveiled the plan in December, Davis has said building a charter high school would give students a choice over District 227, which in the past year has come under fire for allowing many juniors to sit out of taking state-mandated performance tests.

Meanwhile, Davis trumpets her district's success, namely that of all the districts in Illinois with at least a 50 percent or higher poverty level and a black student population of at least 40 percent, District 162 is the only one with 80 percent or more of its students scoring at or above state standards.

Ultimately, that fact may have won over state Superintendent Christopher Koch, who recommended approval of the charter plan.

"Given that District 227 is a relatively low performing district, it appears that it would be in the best interest of the students to give them another viable high school option," Koch wrote in a memo to his board. The plan was unanimously approved by the state board.

The charter school's funding essentially would come from the $13,300 that the high school district collects in revenue for each student.

That's one of the main reasons District 227's board denied the project in February.

Board President Sonya Norwood said she was disappointed with the state's decision, which acknowledged that "the establishment of the Southland charter school has the potential to create financial hardship for the (high school) district."

"The state wants to bankrupt District 227 for a charter school for 500 students," Norwood said.

Due to the financial concerns, the state limited the school's enrollment to 500; Davis had been seeking an enrollment of 1,000. In another blow to the high school district, Koch's memo acknowledged that transitional funds meant to help the high school district cope with the loss of funding likely would not be available.

Still, "the State Superintendent and ISBE staff do not (see) the financial impact in this particular context as being a sufficient reason for the State Board to reject the (charter)," Koch wrote.

Unlike District 227, the charter school would not offer budget-heavy sports like football or volleyball. Instead, it will offer extracurricular activities like chess, golf, concert band and modern dance.

Students would take four years of a foreign language, attend school for an extra two weeks a year, take an extra academic subject each day compared with the rest of District 227 and would attend a mandatory activity period after school.

During its review of the plan over the last few months, the state board noted some of the same potential problems as District 227, including the charter school's ability to serve special-education students and its plan to measure and track its progress. Ultimately, those concerns were answered in follow-up meetings with staff from the State Board of Education, Koch said in his memo.